On Mar 6, 2012, at 4:42 PM, Lachlan Hunt wrote:
> Ideally, we should also have the content providers themselves involved in these discussions and for them to be willing to reach a compromise on the level of protection they will accept. If their only intent, in using you (Netflix, et al) as a proxy, is to dictate exactly what we must provide, then these negotiations are unlikely to go well.
Lachlan,
Just for the record, and to be clear, I am not acting as any kind of "proxy" for any of our content owner partners and do not represent them in any way. I haven't discussed the arguments presented on this thread with them and to be honest I don't know if they are even aware that this discussion is taking place - except perhaps due to the media articles the other week. As far as I know they have no "intent" with respect to this debate here at the W3C (if they so, they should be here to represent themselves, of course).
We made our proposal because we believe this would be a better way for the web to support services such as ours than the ways it does today. That it would enable the full use of HTML in TVs, Set Top Boxes and other devices that play video and so make it easier for our service and similar services to be supported on more devices, to users benefit. It would expand the role of W3C technologies in those devices and those services.
As Christian has outlined, the proposal could facilitate some of the changes that some on this list would like to see: through competition between CDMs and the possibility for greater experimentation in CDM capabilities, implementation and licensing approaches. It is only through experimentation that we can make progress - in this as in anything.
I'm not sure what "negotiations" you refer to above, but if you mean negotiations of commercial terms with content owners, then a W3C working group is probably not the right place for those, especially since - as you say - they are not represented here.
...Mark